WOMEN.. Have we ever realised how powerful this word is? Women are mothers, a mother gives birth to a new life.
Her mother died giving birth to her. Her relatives named her Mahua. As a little child, Mahua needed the care and love of her mother which no one else could give her. So her father, Sudhir, married another woman. But she was his wife, never a mother to Mahua.
Mahua missed her mother and always wondered how different her life would be if she was alive. She’d read fairy tales where the prince and princesses had a lovely mother, sometimes they would get back the loved ones they had once lost and live happily ever after. These stories gave Mahua hope and little Mahua would dream about finding her mother somewhere, somehow.
She isn’t a child anymore. She now understands that the dead can never come back to life, will never come back to you. She’s 17 years old. “A young girl is roaming around in our village. Oh Lord, how embarrasing is that! Girls like her need some security. Sudhir, it’s time you find a young lad for her, get her married so she can fulfill her duties as a woman.” they’d say. “A man is ready to marry her. His family has agreed upon three lakhs”, said Sudhir. Three lakhs was her dowry. Did anyone ask her what she wanted in life? No. She loved someone else. Two innocent hearts were separated over an agreement. That day she wished upon a falling star, just like she did when she was a child, for her mother to come back to her. “She wouldn’t have supported this”, she tells herself with tears in her eyes and scars on her soul. But her step mother turned a deaf ear to her pleads.
If you ever meet Mahua, you’d realise that only god can do such miracles. She was perfection. Her big, bold eyes would tell you her stories while her lips would smile through the pain. But it was that day when she gave up to this cruel world, she lost the war, she lost all hope and faith in life. It was that day when she was sold, the day she realised that her body had a price.
She failed to understand why god gifted us with all these emotions like love and trust when he can’t protect them. She wondered if he understands the pain of losing someone, of getting your heart broken in two. Why did he give us the power to dream, if they wouldn’t ever come true?
That day Mahua was devastated. She succumbed to the society, following orders like an obedient pet just how they like women to be. But this isn’t a story of just one Mahua, this is the story of many girls. Female foeticide, dowry, eve-teasing, rape.. the list goes on. Motherhood is in grave danger. Respect women not only because they’re women but because they are humans too and it’s high time we realise that.